Blogcritics Comments on How Low Can They Go; Pt. Duex!

Comment by JR

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:38:00 EST

Because it's a bogus argument. "...has learned that..." implies the reality of the assertion - it's the same as saying that it's true. For the sentence to be honest, Bush would have to say, "The British government has evidence that..." or "The British Government believes that...". Although in hindsight, even those might be questionable. Perhaps he should have said, "I believe that..."

Comment by HJ

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 11:48:08 EST

Far too late to be relevant to this thread, but I just wanted to point out a teeny little omission in the "Amazon Site" (whatever that is... do you mean amazon.com ?) quote cited in Hal Pawluk's post (#3, above). (From Amazon Site:) [...] When President George W. Bush claimed in the now notorious sixteen words in his 2003 State of the Union address that "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Wilson could not stand by silently. [...] The phrase quoted has ten words, not sixteen. The missing six words? From the actual text of the speech, that quote was preceded by "The British Government has learned that". Seems a bit too convenient to the left-leaning argument that the quote is truncated up front by the word 'that', conveniently omitting a non-trivial bit of context. Those six words of context make the assertion that the President flatly lied, and the putative belligerence of this quote (as widely reported on TV and in the papers), a whole lot weaker. How come no one ever points that out?

Comment by golden palace

Mon, 7 Mar 2005 11:47:23 EST

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Comment by Hal Pawluk

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 13:20:09 EDT

David, could you give me the exact quotes and page numbers from the Franks book where this happens:

In his book, "American Soldier," Tommy Franks confirms even further that belief in that he discusses how he was warned by nearly every one of Iraq's neighbors that Saddam had the weapons and had every intention of using them against the US.

It may be true, but in your How Low Can They Go; Pt. Duex! post you claimed:

"This is [the] month in which Mr. Wilson published his book, The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir, which claimed, amazingly that the President had not lied about the Niger incident."

I just finished reading the Wilson book yesterday and I didn't find it doing any such thing. Thanks.

Comment by Stately Wayne Manor

Sun, 18 Jul 2004 16:44:13 EDT

Pathetique!!!

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Sun, 18 Jul 2004 16:36:08 EDT

eh, yer just jealous you didn't think of it first you old queen, living in yer cave with yer young "ward". After all, when one is discussing international diplomacy, shouldn't one use the lingua franca? (For those tuning in from 'murrica, that is the language used by Ben Franklin and Tommy-boy Jefferson, and sometimes by Dick Cheney, but only when he remembers to say "pardon my french")

Comment by Stately Wayne Manor

Sun, 18 Jul 2004 16:27:03 EDT

Jeeeeezus Christmas, get some real jokes there Carruthers.Ripping off 30 year old dialogue from Monty Python movies is old hat and unoriginal no matter WHAT f***in language it's in, C'est Ne Pas?

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Sun, 18 Jul 2004 15:25:30 EDT

Make sure you include the part where the father (or as he's known in his household, the King) says gesturing to the window, "someday, my son, all this will be yours", and his idiot son says, "wot, the curtains?"

Comment by boomcrashbaby

Sun, 18 Jul 2004 15:09:52 EDT

Launch the cow? I get french translated at http://babelfish.altavista.com/. It isn't perfect. So far, I've gotten the gist of a hamster, elderberries and tiny white cotton trousers. (overlooking some more graphic descriptions that were translated). If I just stick with those though, (as well as 'launch the cow') I see the beginnings of a great naptime story for my daughter, reminiscent of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Thanks for the spark.

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Sun, 18 Jul 2004 14:46:01 EDT

Lancez la vache! Now is ze part where you, and the rest of your rrr-o-gant cow-ards run away like leetle gurls, while I taunt you once more, you pees-pour impérsonation of a civilizé being.

Comment by RJ

Sat, 17 Jul 2004 21:23:41 EDT

Is this now a French-language site?

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Sat, 17 Jul 2004 20:00:26 EDT

D'ailleurs, quel est fran�ais pour votre p�re était un hamster, et votre m�re a-t-elle senti des baies de sureau, et je suis du petomme dans votre direction générale?

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Sat, 17 Jul 2004 19:54:04 EDT

�videmment le petit camarade est frustré dans ses efforts de devenir un lutteur miniature professionnel. Et ses pairs raillent son masculinity faible.

Comment by Hal Pawluk

Sat, 17 Jul 2004 19:20:50 EDT

Et ils n'ont pas censuré cela? Sacre merde!

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Sat, 17 Jul 2004 19:15:29 EDT

Il y en a qui indiquent que le David qui porte le pantalon minuscule de coton est plein de la merde. Mais je dis le non! Il souffre seulement d'un manque de stimulation anale et étant raillé par le sien améliore.

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Sat, 17 Jul 2004 16:14:02 EDT

Given that Wilson has sent a public letter to the committee correcting errors and distortions (after all, he's a diplomat, he wouldn't call them lying sacks of shit, not like this guy), what really puzzles me is why the dude they know at keggers as Flannelman, the Flannel-meister, el Flannorolla-o-rock-a-rolla, der Flannelstein, the Little Pink Flannel Bunny, etc. (at least that's what some people say, according to Faux Newz), hasn't linked to his real blog site? No doubt the real source of his "information".

Comment by Hal Pawluk

Sat, 17 Jul 2004 11:44:12 EDT

Your central claim was so groundless, David, that I took a moment to check another of your sources, the link to the right-wing OpinionJournal. There I found the following:

"When coordinating the State of the Union, no Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts or officials told the National Security Council (NSC) to remove the '16 words' or that there were concerns about the credibility of the Iraq-Niger Uranium reporting," the report says. In short, Joe Wilson is a partisan fraud whose trip disproved nothing, and what CIA doubts there were on Niger weren't shared with the White House.

The leap of logic required to draw that conclusion is breath-taking, but invalid (and not surprising on that site). There is no possible way to conclude that "Joe Wilson is a partisan fraud" from that Senate report excerpt. Wilson made his report to his minders but he was not responsible for and had no control over whether anyone from the CIA told the NSC what to do with the 16 words. Also, note the weasel: this was only "when coordinating the State of the Union." The NSC was told to remove the claim at other times, as seen in the following further excerpts from the same Senate report:

"On Oct. 5, 2002, ... the ADDI [associate deputy director for Intelligence] said an Iraqi nuclear analyst — he could not remember who — raised concerns about the sourcing and some of the facts of the Niger reporting, specifically that the control of the mines in Niger would have made it very difficult to get yellowcake to Iraq." (Page 55)
"Based on the analyst's comments, the ADDI faxed a memo to the deputy national security advisor that said, 'Remove the sentence ... " (Page 56)
"On Oct. 6, 2002, the CIA sent a second fax to the White House that said, 'More on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points ... " (Page 56)

Debate is fine, but let's stick with all the facts rather than weaseling our way through this.

Comment by Hal Pawluk

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 20:19:01 EDT

And yes, I would like you to give me chapter and verse from the book showing excatly where it, as you asserted, "claimed, amazingly that the President had not lied about the Niger incident."

Comment by Hal Pawluk

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 20:16:28 EDT

Wilson wrote that he did not learn the identity of the Iraqi official until this January, when he talked again with his Niger source." So what? How does that support your first assertion that in his book, Wilson "claimed, amazingly that the President had not lied about the Niger incident"

Comment by JR

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 17:07:47 EDT

The real question here is, why did Joe Wilson lie about this if there wasn't something wrong with it? Good question. By the same token, why haven't the two "senior administration officials" come forward if there wasn't something wrong with leaking Valerie Plame's identity?

Comment by David Flanagan

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 15:34:24 EDT

Hal, Have you read the book or are you asking me to give you the specific page number and section? The NY Times reviewer reported, as did several other news sources, that in the book Wilson later learned that "Wilson wrote that he did not learn the identity of the Iraqi official until this January, when he talked again with his Niger source." Furthermore, the Butler Report, which came out just a day or two ago, affirms the intelligence originally given to Bush regarding Saddam's attempts to buy uranium in Africa, including Niger. As you probably know, President Bush cited that intelligence during his speech, not US intelligence. David

Comment by Hal Pawluk

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:41:56 EDT

No, David, #11 doesn't cut it. The article (not Wilson) says:

It was Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as "Baghdad Bob," who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade -- an overture the official saw as a possible effort to buy uranium. That's according to a new book Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq had been trying to buy enriched "yellowcake" uranium. Wilson wrote that he did not learn the identity of the Iraqi official until this January, when he talked again with his Niger source.

If you look at the actual passage from the book, Wilson says that the Nigerian official:

"hesitated and looked up to the sky as if plumbing the depths of his memory, then offered that perhaps the Iraqi might have wanted to talk about uranium."

That speculation by the official does not support your initial claim that Wilson himself, in his book, recanted about Bush lying. Based on what you've provided so far, I'm afraid I'd have to rank your post on a scale of 1 to 10 as:

Credibilty: minus 4
Credulity: plus 10

But that's just me, of course - YMMV.

Comment by David Flanagan

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:36:15 EDT

You mean outing his wife; Joe Wilson was not the CIA agent. No, Wilson outed himself in a sense because, while on assignment, he WORKED for the CIA. Furthermore, he was recommended by his wife, which is certainly not a normal occurrence that someone would recommend a spouse who has never acted in a covert role. Its strange and it gives credibility to Novak's sources, especially in light of the fact that Wilson has repeatedly and adamantly denied that his wife recommended him. He's said this on TV, on the radio, and in print, yet now we find out that their are memos in which Valerie Plame recommended her husband for the role. The real question here is, why did Joe Wilson lie about this if there wasn't something wrong with it? David

Comment by Phillip Winn

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 13:58:21 EDT

David (#52), I suppose you can quibble about whether the words "under investigation" have a special meaning beyond the obvious, but I based that statement on this sentence from the link I posted: Because a U.S. Justice Department special prosecutor is investigating whether any crime was committed when my column first identified Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA employee, on advice of counsel I have not written on the subject since last October. If a special prosecutor was investigating whether any crime was committed when I wrote something, and my lawyer had advised me to keep quiet on the subject, I think that the phrase "under investigation" would be appropriate, but I'm funny that way. Sure, it could be that Novak meant to say "when my source gave me the information which my column later revealed," but what he wrote more explicitly puts the investigation on his column.

Comment by JR

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 13:45:46 EDT

You see, whoever revealed that Valerie Plame was the one who recommended her husband for the trip did so because nepotism is illegal and it cast doubt upon Joe Wilson's credibility as a source. How do you know why the person who revealed her did so? I thought that question was at the core of the whole scandal. And if they did so to expose nepotism, surely it would have been more appropriate to go through legal channels rather than shop the story around to political pundits. Besides, what of the legality regarding Joe Wilson outing himself in Vanity Fair? Wasn't he obligated to guard this intelligence rather then reveal it? You mean outing his wife; Joe Wilson was not the CIA agent. First of all, she was already outed; second, she was semi-disguised in the photo. I'm not saying the Vanity Fair cover wasn't a questionable attempt to get attention, but I don't think there was anything illegal there.